Food Photography Tips: Carrot Cake

This is the first post in a series of “behind the scenes” food photography in my little corner of the world here in eastern NC. I always seem to have readers emailing or friends asking how I photograph the food I make for the blog. Sometimes I’ll finish photographing, look around at my big ole mess and think, “people sure wouldn’t want to see this chaos”. Well, it appears that a lot of people do, so here goes with this recipe for Carrot Cake with a Lemon Cream Cheese Frosting!

First things first: I have no formal training and still have a ton to learn. I’ve learned along the way for the past 3 years and this is a continuous journey for me. I’m sharing what I’ve learned so far. If you have something to share that you’ve learned, PLEASE DO by leaving a comment!

So this is my little rigged setup in my photography room. I have a bench that I place by the window for natural light. I used 2 black foam boards in an attempt to create a black seamless background. I thought the white icing would contrast nicely with the solid black background.

Since the boards were so narrow, I pulled up an old chair and used my white reflector board to bounce the sunlight back onto the cake and prevent shadowing the best that I could.

The sunlight directly hits that window at about 3 pm this time of year. The sunlight was so harsh that I had to hang a white sheet to diffuse it.

Since the only “garnish” I used in this photograph was the chopped pecans on top of the cake, I had the bag of chopped pecans handy in case I decided to add more at the last minute. I always try to have extra garnishes that I’m using on-hand if I need them.

My camera settings for the photograph at the beginning of this post:

ISO — 100

Shutter Speed — 1/8 s

Aperture — 3.5

There you have it. Photographing food doesn’t require a lot of expensive props or equipment. The camera that I use is an affordable entry level DSLR Canon Rebel T5i with a 50mm F/1.8 lens. I recommend Plate to Pixel by Helene Dujardin for a WEALTH of information on food photography tips… this book is my food photography bible!

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Comments

First, I’m SO jealous of that window – the space in front of the window – and that glorious light. Our house is surrounded by great big trees and I never have a good light situation like that. You should see the places I’ve set up my photos to get around this! Recently, I’ve discovered that if I set up in my garage and open my garage door I can get some decent light BUT my neighbors, who have no idea I’m a food blogger, think I’m insane now – or just really excited about a bowl of soup 🙂 I need to get better at using my tripod. I’m impatient and always prefer to hold the camera in my hand so that’s the next thing I’m working on. I hope you continue to share the behind the scenes of your photos shoots. It’s great inspiration!

Thank you, Valerie! I understand about neighbors thinking we’re nuts… at my old house I would sometimes photograph on the front porch. People walking through the neighborhood looked at me as if I had lost my mind! 🙂 It took me a while also to get used to using a tripod.

Just discovered your awesome food blog! I’m kind of a newbie at this food photography stuff. Set up my “studio” by a great window also. But the light is now changing this time of year so I find that I don’t have a ton of time to prepare before the light shifts on me! I love your idea of putting up a white sheet to diffuse the light. That’s genius! Any new tricks are so valuable to me, so thanks so much!